Noticed
by Desert of the Real
Summary: Trinity... the Trinity? That cracked the IRS d-base?" A take on Trinity's famous feat. Written for the fan fiction challenge at The Looking Glass forums.


Disclaimer: I don't own _The Matrix_ trilogy or anything related to it. It all belongs to the Wachowski brothers. I'm just playing in their world.

The class fell into a silent stupor as the lecturer droned on and on. As the monotone permeated the otherwise eerily quiet room, not a soul was conscious or awake enough to hear. Welcome to the typical large-enrollment lecture at the average public university… and this Introduction to Computer Science lecture with more than 400 students certainly wasn't an exception.

Natalie Parker was no more immune to the anesthetic effects of the professor's dry, dull voice than the rest of her classmates. Idly, she doodled in her notebook, occasionally pushing a lock of short, raven-black hair out of her face. Not that she really needed to pay attention to the professor anyway; computer science was Natalie's easiest class by far, and she consistently scored top marks without even listening to any of the lectures. In fact, she wondered why she even bothered to come to class at all, but supposed that she did for the sake of keeping up appearances because of the nice little scholarship that the university had given her.

Glancing at the board briefly just to get a small sense of what was going on, she sighed in annoyance. C+ _again_? She'd learned that ages ago. Were they ever going to move on to something more interesting?

Outside of classes, Natalie pretty much disappeared from human existence entirely. She didn't really cause problems with anyone, and even managed a decent relationship with her roommate. It was just that she didn't really have any close friends; this, however, was a state that was not new to her, as it had been too many years to count since she could really call anyone her "best friend." Natalie was a tough person to get close to, with others perceiving her as somewhat of an "ice queen." And, honestly, she was not too bothered by this, for other matters tended to dominate her more immediate attention.

It was in her sophomore year of high school that she began to stumble upon the hobby of hacking. She had always understood computers better than she did people, and thus her entrance into the hacking world was a logical one. At first, it was all in good fun, a joke, really. She'd hack into computers of particularly annoying classmates and mess things up, just for kicks. When the scholarship committee at the university had given her a computer, she'd hacked into the school's mainframe to change the settings on her system (as they were tightly regulated). She'd even hacked the university's library system one day simply because she was bored. Nothing serious. Just a way to screw with the system simply because she could.

One day during her junior year of high school, Natalie happened upon a private hacker chat room, where they were discussing some mysterious entity called "the Matrix." People had their differing theories on what it actually was, but no one really knew (apparently apart from a man named Morpheus, a name spoken in hacker circles with an air of reverence), which fascinated Natalie to no end. It was, according to predominant hacker rumor, some kind of system that was controlling the lives of everyone on the planet. Perhaps this was the answer to that nagging feeling that was always tugging at the back of her mind, that something just wasn't quite right with the world? She needed to know. She wanted to know. It was as if a fire had ignited inside of her. And thus, from that moment on, every spare minute of her life was consumed with this desperate search for anything that she could find on the Matrix. Hacking was now more than a hobby. It became her life.

She knew that every established hacker, like what she was on her way to becoming, needed a unique handle. A name that fit her eluded her for at least a year and a half, when she tried a number of different nicks (including "Red Queen," since _Alice in Wonderland_ had always been her favorite story growing up). The answer, however, came to her one day during her senior year of high school, on her way home. It was on a sign for a church, which she thought was odd, because she'd never really been religious. "Trinity," however, just felt… right.

Trinity had now spent the better part of three years obsessively searching for information about Morpheus, the Matrix, anything she could manage. Along the way, she'd gained immeasurable experience and skill, managing to get away with increasingly more complicated and risky hacks. Morpheus apparently only contacted the best of the best, and Trinity wanted so desperately to ensure that she was one of them, those elite few that could be allowed one glimmer into the hackers' Holy Grail, the answer to the ultimate question: "What is the Matrix?" Her efforts thus far, however, had come up short, and she had an unquenchable thirst to remedy that.

It was only when she noticed the others vacating the seats around her in the lecture hall that Natalie began to come out of her reverie and realize that class was over. In a bit of a daze, she slid her notebook into her backpack and found her way out of the lecture hall without a word to anyone. Now that the pretense of showing up to class and pretending like she actually cared was done for the day, Natalie Parker, the scholarship-receiving honor student, could retire. The night belonged to Trinity.

Trinity made it back to her dorm in about a seven minute's walk. Spring was in the air, but she didn't care. She had a one-track mind, for a sudden inspiration had hit her like a flash of lightning. It was insane, and something that hackers older and wiser than her couldn't pull off in a million years, but she was going to do it anyway. She was going to hack the government.

The idea had come out of nowhere. Did she have a death wish? No one could possibly get away with hacking into government databases untraced. It was too secure, too monitored. Yet, it was the perfect risky scenario that might be the ticket to getting Morpheus to sit up and take notice.

Which governmental agency was to be the target? Though Trinity wanted to make a statement, she didn't really want to compromise national security. She needed to think of an agency that was lame, useless. Something that would be important enough to be noticed, yet not terribly threatening if breached (for if Trinity were to really try to hack the Pentagon, she'd _really_ have a death wish). Something that she might still have a chance at getting away with. After a moment's thought, the answer came to her: the IRS.

_What person in their right mind doesn't hate the IRS? _Trinity asked herself as she slung her backpack off her shoulder and slumped into her desk chair, powering on her computer. _Stupid, greedy assholes who steal all of your hard-earned money. And for what? Who knows._ The idea was perfect, a personal revenge on behalf of everyone who'd been screwed over by the IRS too many a time. There had to be a huge population of such people. Now, their representative would rise to the occasion.

Trinity allowed herself a tiny smirk as she set to work. Oh, this was going to be fun.

Seven grueling hours later, for encryption after encryption had been difficult, but not impossible, to overcome, the database was cracked. Trinity had been as careful, covering her tracks as best as she could. She knew it would only be a matter of time before they tracked her; she may have been good enough to crack the system, but no one was good enough to get away undetected.

Opening a random file, she modified it, playfully writing a simple, "Trinity was here" at the end, and then immediately logged off. It would be a matter of hours before the name "Trinity" appeared all over the major news outlets. Trinity, the first to successfully hack into the IRS database. It wouldn't be much longer than that before some government lackey found her. She had to get out, get out now.

--

"Trinity… _the_ Trinity? That cracked the IRS d-base?"

"That was a long time ago."

_fin_


End file.
